Thursday, June 15, 2017

Psalmic Sermon of Righteousness

This fabulous book Griffiin and Sabine offer
a hands-on experience of reading the very letters, in the handwriting of each,
that these two share a romance of poetry and affection with each other over a
year’s time. The story unfolds through the handmade postcards of London card
designer Griffin and the mysterious South Pacific islander Sabine.The pen pals never meet, but their lives are
surprisingly parallel in experience as they share their art and poetry making.

The parallelity (if I can say it that way) is captured in the
psalm we have for today – Psalm 112 and it’s companion Psalm 111.

The juxtaposition of the two psalms is important in hearing
God’s love story with humanity.

Psalm
111 expresses God’s commitment to righteousness and

Psalm 112 makes a parallel
urging about human care for that very righteousness.

Here is my offering -

Praise the Lord!Prayer seeps in my veins with yearning for
knowing God’s will *

And delight germinates hope from the
green shoot of a smile

on the lips of the woman at the bus stop as I drive by.

Great are the ways
that God makes God’s self known,

in the rich land that now pours forth food
where people were once housed in Detroit. *

The community garden growers trust in
God’s generativity of harvest.

The conversation
around that picnic table of buckets of lettuce, turnips and radishes *

is rich
with proof of co-creation from the land by a people of generations who
believed.

Those new friends
share love in their hearts that came from a God of abundance *

as their
vegetables draw them from all parts of the neighborhood to be with each other.

“It is an honor to
work on this garden plot” she said as she knelt to pull the weeds. *

“It is the
only time that I belong. I am happy to share what little we can grow here.”

And every seed, every
raised bed, every pulled weed, every shared morning of work and transplants,
*